Prudence

by Jilly Cooper

  Prudence

  Jilly Cooper

  The trouble with the Mulholland family, Prudence decided, was that they were all in love with the wrong people. She'd been overjoyed when Pendle, her super-cool barrister boyfriend, invited her home for the weekend to meet his family. At least she might get some reaction out of him - so far he hadn't so much as made a pass at her, after the first night when he'd nearly raped her. But home turned out to be a decaying mansion in the Lake District, and family were his glamorous, scatty mother who forgot the mounting bills by throwing wild parties, and brothers, Ace, dark and forbidding, and Jack, handsome, married and only too ready to take over with Pru if Pendle didn't get a move on. It was only when she noticed the way Pendle looked at Jack's wife Maggie that it began to dawn on Pru that there was more to this weekend than met the eye. It looked like a non-stop game of changing partners...

  Jilly Cooper

  PRUDENCE

  For Maura McCarthy

  with love

  Author’s Note

  The idea for PRUDENCE first came to me in 1967. I wrote it as a long short story called HOUSE OF CARDS and it appeared in serial form in 19. I took the story and completely rewrote it, and the result is PRUDENCE.

  Chapter One

  For the twentieth time I said goodnight to Pendle and let myself into the flat. Big Ben was striking eleven. Jane, my flatmate, stretched out in front of the fire, raised a scarlet face to me through a mass of drying blonde hair.

  ‘Any progress?’ she asked hopefully, then answered for herself. ‘No, obviously not — you look as unpounced upon as ever.’

  I went over to the mirror. My curls were unruffled, my lipstick unsmudged. Boasting apart, I looked great. Why then, after twenty dates, hadn’t Pendle made a pass at me?

  We’d met at a party a couple of months back — a ghastly What-do-you-do-for-a-living? Oh-I-bash-a-typewriter sort of party, with overhead lighting and someone dishing fruit salad from a huge bowl into our glasses. Pendle and I were the only sheep among a huge crowd of goats, but then they always say the fairest flowers grow on the foulest dung-heaps.

  He was not the sort of man you noticed immediately — light brown hair, a thin, expressionless face and pale grey eyes, but he had a detachment and exaggerated cool that was, in itself, a provocation. He wore a charcoal grey suit, of the most irreproachable orthodoxy, grey shirt and a pale tie, but he was tall and very thin, so his clothes looked good on him.

  I was wearing my joke kit that evening. I’m very sensitive to clothes. When I wear frills I become demure; in studded leather, I stride around and act butch, but when I wear my joke kit — orange Bermudas with braces and a cheesecloth shirt — I scintillate and tell jokes. When Pendle came over and joined our group, I rattled off three jokes in quick succession that had everyone except him falling about, so I moved off to talk to someone else.

  The party was given in one of those long, high eau de nihilistic Sloane Square rooms where you always think something exciting is happening at the other end, and it never is. One of the flatmates, Marcia, had even asked her mother. Not that I’ve anything against mothers in the right context, but at parties they do waste valuable hunting time. And this one was a twenty-stone do-gooder, who’d set like a great pink blancmange on the sofa. Every so often unfortunate guests were clobbered to talk to her.

  ‘Eats, anyone?’ said another flatmate, waving a plate under our noses. ‘I’m sure you’re not on a diet, Pru, you’re so skinny.’

  ‘I’m starving,’ I said, spearing a sausage. ‘I only had time to grab a sandwich-board man at lunchtime.’

  ‘I do hope I don’t pong,’ confided the flatmate. ‘Marcia filled the bath with ice so none of us could have a bath.’

  Next minute Marcia rolled up with two new arrivals.

  ‘I want you to meet Eileen,’ she said, introducing me to a large blonde with dirty finger nails, ‘who makes absolutely sooper jewellery. I know you’d like some, Pru. And this is Clifford, our firm’s accountant, who’s very clever with figures.’

  ‘Only some figures,’ said Clifford, leering at my too tight Bermudas, then braying with laughter and spraying cashew nuts all over me, between the gap in his front teeth.

  I asked Eileen about the ‘sooper’ jewellery.

  ‘Oh please don’t interrogate me,’ she said. ‘I’m so tired,’ and proceeded to describe the entire plot of a film she’d seen that afternoon.

  ‘I work in Harrods,’ said a pale girl, ‘but in the book department,’ as though that made it better.

  Then they all talked about President Carter, Mrs Thatcher, Laura Ashley, and the latest biography by Antonia Fraser, which everyone seemed to have read except me. I know one should try to look vivacious at parties when one’s stuck with boring people. Attractive men are always supposed to think what fun you look and come over and introduce themselves; but the man in the charcoal grey suit was showing no signs of approaching me, and any minute I’d be buried alive in cashew nuts. The flatmate came round with the sausages. I drew her aside.

  ‘Who’s the man in the grey suit?’

  Her face brightened. ‘Oh, isn’t he lovely? He’s called Pendle, Pendle Mulholland.’

  ‘I bet he made that up.’

  ‘He’s quite capable of it,’ she said. ‘Marcia invited him. She says he’s absolutely brilliant. Evidently he was called to the Bar younger than anyone else in years.’

  ‘He ought to be called to the bar more often,’ I said crossly. ‘He hasn’t touched his drink. It might make him more jolly.’

  I’m a trier at parties, so I chatted up all the draggy men and danced around to the record player, but I was conscious all the time of this Pendle man watching me like a cat.

  Perhaps the fruit salad was more potent than I’d thought, because I finally went up to him and said, ‘Why don’t you have another drink and look a bit more jolly?’

  ‘There isn’t any whisky,’ he said, ‘and the local wine’s a bit too vigorous for me, although it’s done wonders for that plant.’ He pointed to a mauve chrysanthemum in a pot on the table. ‘It was quite dead when I arrived.’

  I giggled and took another sip at my drink.

  ‘I can’t place the tangy flavour,’ I said.

  ‘Vim probably. Marcia mixed it in the wash basin. You must have the constitution of an ox,’ he added as I drained the glass.

  ‘I’m after the cherry,’ I said. ‘I hear you’re a solicitor.’

  ‘Barrister.’

  ‘I never know the difference.’

  ‘I talk more in court.’

  ‘What did you do today?’

  ‘Defended a wife-basher.’

  ‘Goodness, how exciting. Did you get him off?’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘By proving his wife was utterly impossible.’

  ‘Was she?’

  ‘Shouldn’t think so. That isn’t the point,’ he said. ‘My job was to get him off.’

  ‘Defending the wicked for the sake of worldly gain,’ I said. I examined his cold, fleshless face with its beautiful bone-structure, and strange, grey, unblinking, deep-set eyes. He must look stunning in a wig — Robespierre, the charcoal grey incorruptible.

  ‘I bet you’re absolutely lethal in court,’ I said.

  He gave a thin smile, and told me about a drugs case in which he’d been prosecuting the week before. I found it riveting. I was also fascinated how detached he was.

  Then a diversion was caused by one of Marcia’s young men who had mistakenly thought it was fancy dress and had turned up as a goat in a furry coat and pink udders. I had had enough to drink by then to think it terribly funny and started crying with laughter. Looking up suddenly, I saw Pendle absolutely devouring me with his eyes.

  ‘Are you
taking me for A levels?’ I said, groping for a tissue. ‘Didn’t your mother ever teach you it was rude to stare?’

  ‘I’m sorry. You’re extraordinarily like someone I used to know.’

  ‘My boss doesn’t like solicitors,’ I said. ‘He says but for them he’d have had a perfectly amicable divorce.’

  ‘They all say that. What do you do?’

  ‘I’m a copywriter. I sit in an office all day thinking what to put. Then when I finally put it down Rodney, my boss, comes along, changes it all, and pretends it was his idea in the first place. He’s been away all week shooting.’

  ‘Grouse?’ asked Pendle.

  ‘No. Butter commercials in Devon.’

  I’d obviously been hogging the most attractive man in the room for too long because Marcia came up and asked Pendle if he was all right. Bloody rude, I thought. Then she asked me if I was going to the Old Girls’ reunion in Pavilion Road. I said I wasn’t. Had I seen anything of old Piggy Hesketh. I said I hadn’t. Then I admired her dress, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  ‘Laura Ashley, of course,’ she said smugly.

  Red-faced flatmates were now staggering in under piles of plates towards a table at the other end of the room.

  ‘There’s eats whenever you need them,’ she said.

  Suddenly there was a lot of shrieking and some rugger types arrived.

  ‘Oh God,’ said Pendle.

  ‘I do hope everyone’s going to dance again once they’ve eaten,’ said Marcia. ‘I must go and turn up the vol.’

  ‘Dust to dust, Laura Ashley to Laura Ashley,’ I intoned, helping myself liberally to a bottle of Cointreau that had been left on the table.

  I looked at Pendle again, suddenly deciding I wanted him very much.

  ‘Who was the person you think I’m exactly like?’ I said.

  He was about to tell me when Marcia came roaring over saying she must break us up — like a French loaf — because she terribly wanted Pendle to meet Charles who was a partner in D’Eath and March. Almost at once the lecherous accountant, who’d given up spraying cashews and taken up toast crumbs and pâté, came over and asked me to dance, so I jigged around with him and had another belt of Cointreau to keep up my spirits. Then I had some gin and orange that had been brought by one of the rugger players for his girlfriend. Then one of the rugger players asked me to dance and thrust me around like a cocktail shaker.

  ‘If you don’t stop, I’ll turn into a White Lady,’ I panted.

  Normally I don’t drink much, but Pendle’s presence had jolted me. I knew I was reaching the dangerous stage when suddenly a wicked alter ego emerges making me cast smouldering glances at happily married men, and cannon off groups of people like a shiny red billiard ball. A stockbroker in a flowered scarf kept turning off the lights. I expected to see Pendle’s eyes gleaming in the dark like a cat.

  People were eating now. Despite the fact that the pâté tasted like old socks and the kipper mousse contained more bones than Highgate Cemetery, everyone was sycophantically asking Marcia for the recipe.

  ‘Lots of brandy and garlic,’ she was saying.

  ‘Nice tits,’ said the rugger player, looking at my nipples. The pockets of my cheesecloth shirt, which usually covers them, had ridden up after all that shaking.

  ‘It’s much easier of course if you get your butcher to mince the pork and the pig’s liver first, like my butcher does,’ said Marcia.

  ‘I’d like a balloon,’ I said to no one in particular.

  ‘Come back to my little black hole of Belgravia,’ said the accountant.

  ‘Then you chop up some fresh thyme,’ said Marcia. Suddenly she noticed that her mother was sitting unattended on the sofa, stuffing herself with kedgeree and, grabbing my arm like a vice, said, ‘Oh Pru, I know you’d like to meet Mummy.’

  Why should I meet Mummy? I was far too busy keeping handsome men in stitches with my witty repartee. I stuck my legs in like our dog when he doesn’t want to be bathed, but Marcia was too strong for me — much stronger than any of the rugger players. Next minute I was rammed down on the only tiny corner of the sofa that wasn’t occupied by Mummy.

  ‘Lovely kedgeree, Marcia,’ said her mother enthusiastically. ‘I don’t know how you do everything.’

  ‘Oh it’s just organization; you know that better than anyone,’ said Marcia, skipping away like a young lamb and leaving me to my fate. I couldn’t see Pendle anywhere.

  ‘You must be very proud of Marcia,’ I said insincerely.

  ‘Everyone says that,’ said her mother smugly. ‘She gets on with everyone, runs the flat, holds down a job, and of course she’s Sir Basil’s right hand, and then there’s all her voluntary work.’

  After Marcia she moved on to shopping, rabbiting on and on about triumphant forays to Dickins and Jones, dignified rebukes to shop assistants, the matching saucers tracked down, the jersey with the pulled thread returned. Really I wasn’t up to it at all.

  Behind her the accountant was making more code signs trying to get me on to the dance floor, and out of the corner of my eye I could see the rugger player waiting to tackle from the left. The flatmate who hadn’t been able to have a bath was dancing with the goat, which seemed appropriate. Perhaps they were having a pong-pong match. A couple were necking unashamedly on the next door armchair, the man’s hand well advanced into the girl’s blouse. I was terrified Marcia’s mother would see them. Marcia had turned up the volume to drown the more excessive of the rugger songs and the distant sounds of some of the fruit salad being regurgitated in the lavatory.

  I couldn’t hear a word Marcia’s mother was saying. My only hope was to watch her teeth and laugh when she did. I was in despair; my glass was empty; I thought of sending out maroons. I knew as a copywriter and as a potential novelist I ought to be studying the old monster. One day I might want to put her in the book. The true writer’s supposed never to be bored by anyone, but what was the point of studying her if I’d be far too drunk to remember anything about her in the morning?

  Suddenly I saw Pendle through a gap. He was talking to the blonde with dirty fingernails, but he was glancing at his watch and had the abstracted look of a referee about to blow his whistle. That decided me.

  ‘I must get you some of Marcia’s delicious pudding,’ I yelled in her ear, and floundered towards the food table. Marcia passed me going in the other direction.

  ‘Poor Mummy,’ she screamed, ‘I was just coming to rescue you.’

  I ate some kedgeree out of the dish. It was quite good. I licked the spoon thoughtfully and took some more. One of the rugger players tugged off the goat’s udders and, to much shrieking, threw them out of the window. Pendle suddenly looked round and caught my eye. He left the blonde and came over.

  ‘“I stood among them, but not of them”,’ I intoned, ‘“In a shroud of thoughts which were not their thoughts”.’

  ‘You got trapped,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve been taken on a tour of three million department stores. I feel utterly shop-wrecked.’

  He didn’t smile. I licked the spoon, then helped myself to more kedgeree and ate it. Then I realized how disgusting it must look. I blushed and put the spoon down. The mauve candles bought to match the Michaelmas daisies, which Mummy had presumably brought up from the country, were almost burnt down.

  ‘The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plaintiff,’ I said, picking at the battlements of wax. Still not a flicker. Really he was making me feel very edgy with all this staring.

  ‘Pretty fireproof, aren’t you,’ I snapped. ‘Why don’t you go if you’re so bored?’

  He looked at me consideringly for a minute then said, ‘I will if you come with me.’

  I was so surprised I nearly dropped the saucepan.

  ‘Wild horse-guards wouldn’t keep me away,’ I said.

  Two seconds later, I was burrowing like a dog through all those tweed and camelhair coats to find my bag, panicking that he might change his mind.

  Outsi
de the beginning of autumn lay sodden and misty, with a faint smell of dying bonfires in the Chelsea gardens. Conker husks and the kapok innards of the udder lay strewn over the pavement.

  He had an expensive looking car, pale grey, of course. I remember there was a half-eaten bar of chocolate in the glove compartment. I ought to have seen the red light then. People who don’t gobble up a bar of chocolate in one go have too much self-control.

  ‘Why are you called Pendle?’ I said, snuggling down in the front seat.

  ‘After a mountain, not far from our house.’

  ‘I bet it’s hell to climb and covered with snow all the year round,’ I said, admiring his perfect Greek nose. I’d got hiccups quite badly. ‘Not a very good party.’

  ‘I don’t like cold houses and warm drink,’ said Pendle, ‘but it had its compensation. Where do you live?’

  ‘On my nerves and on the edge of Battersea Park. My flatmate works in publishing. She’s lovely.’

  ‘All girls say their flatmates are lovely.’

  ‘She really is. She’s having an affair with a married man, going home to bed in the lunch hour and all that.’

  ‘What about you?’ he said.

  ‘I play the field,’ I said.

  It was true. I had plenty of boyfriends at that time, but no one I really cared about. I was poised for the big dive.

  The sky was a brooding dappled dun colour; the moon was drifting through the clouds like a distraught hostess. A slight breeze jostled the leaves along pavements and gutters. We were driving along the Embankment now, the river rippling in the moonlight. Such was my euphoria, I didn’t realize we hadn’t crossed Chelsea Bridge towards Battersea until we drew up at a large block of flats.

  ‘Ou sommes-nous maintenant?’ I said.

  ‘Mon apartement,’ said Pendle.

  ‘Oh la la. Where’s that?’

  ‘Westminster. Very convenient for my chamber in the Temple.’

  ‘Torture chambers,’ I muttered. ‘I suppose that’s where you dream up devilish plots to confound your poor victims.’